Power failure during Slack9 setup

From: John Schulz (schulzjf_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/28/03 

Date: 28 Aug 2003 05:53:32 -0700

The title 'bout says it.

  Slackware 9.0 setup was proceeding from my bootable CD just fine.
My NIC was detected, partitions were mounted, /etc/fstab configured;
you name it.

  Then the power dropped for just long enough to crash the setup which
had only been running 20 seconds, tops. It had only installed the
first 3 or 4 packages in the 'a' series. I rebooted without the CD to
see what remained of my Slackware 8.0 (2.2.19? kernel) install and
hoping the "not cleanly unmounted. Check forced" message would appear
and clean up any problems created by kicking the chair out from under
the disk.

  There were no boot errors and I could still login but glibc was now
missing so everything dependent on that failed. I decided I'd luckily
gotten away cleanly and waited until all risk of power failure had
passed to begin the install anew.

  During this second install the black console screen started
scrolling errors like:
[Pkg name? Not sure] ext2_bad_block: free blocks [and something] do
not match

  Sometimes it would only be 2 or 3 such messages other times it would
be 4 pages.

  I now cannot login. ANY string of text causes an error from crypt
complaining about too short a login. CTRL-ALT-DEL at the login causes
a "You do not exist. Go away." error.

  I began the install again, this time choosing to do the "slow
format, checks for bad blocks" on both partitions. No complaints
about the drives but I got the same error messages again.

  Luckily, I can still use the bootable CD to login as root and mount
the 3 ext2 partitions. Even more luckily, I'm not worried about any
data on the 3 partitions, so a complete format can be done if need be.

  So, how do I:
1)Fix any damage on the drives
OR
2)Re-format, or otherwise prepare, the drives to accept the
installation?

  Sorry if the message is too long. Thanks for any help.

.john